Biggest Multi-Cloud Security Challenges Include Cost and Management

More and more organizations have decided that using one cloud isn’t enough. They’re moving to multi-cloud setups to get benefits like greater resiliency and redundancy, and the ability to optimize performance.

But amidst those advantages lurks a dark side: multiple clouds also means operating in environments with higher risk. Your data, for instance, is scattered much farther and wider than in a single cloud. 

To learn how attendees deal with those threats, we polled ActualTech Media attendees at a recent event about the biggest barrier to achieving a unified security strategy across multiple clouds. 

The top answer was the cost of integrating third-party security tools. This isn’t surprising, as these disparate solutions often don’t play nice together, leading to fights in the security sandbox that can quickly get out of hand.

This can result in great cost as well as overwhelming complexity. Tools can be used in on-premises-only, SaaS, or hybrid configurations, making the ideal of “single pane of glass” management impossible. 

Going with a single security vendor can eliminate this contention and provide a simple, easy-to-use UI. But that too comes with a cost, in the form of vendor lock-in. It’s the classic IT dilemma: a “single throat to choke”—i.e., avoiding the “finger of blame” game that using multiple vendors can spur—versus being at the mercy of one supplier and its feature set, pricing model, update cadence, etc. 

An important factor in determining direction will be an organization’s size and goals. Smaller companies will likely have fewer tools and clouds, and more modest expectations. Enterprises will have more complex needs, but also bigger budgets and more resources. Planning will thus be key, whether you’re large or small.